Stuff Dreams Are Made Of (3 page)

“Great. Bring the dog, I love animals. I’m a great cook.” I had to think for a minute. Obscure as it was, it came to me. “Glenn Close in
Fatal Attraction
.”

He wiped his wet, greasy hands on his dirty apron. “You know your movies. I’m proud of you, pard. Proud of you.”

The fairground restrooms had six public showers, like a college dorm. The cement block facility smelled sour, like ripe laundry, and as I washed off the stench of the grease and onion, I wondered which was worse. The running water echoed off the block walls and I scrubbed for all I was worth.

We cleaned up as well as we could, glad that we’d brought a change of clothes, and we put on less offensive jeans and T-shirts and walked down the path.

James found Stan’s pizza wagon. If it involved cards, a scheme, a business idea, or making and losing money, James could always sniff it out. The vehicle was painted like a circus wagon, with bright colors, big fake wooden wheels, and a huge slice of pizza painted on the side to look like a clown’s face. Two slices of pepperoni for the eyes, an olive for the nose, and a slice of red ripe tomato for the mouth.

They’d already dealt a hand and cracked their first beers by the time we arrived, and my nose told me that one or two of the six had not yet showered.

“Pull up a chair, boys.” Bruce Crayer waved, motioning to us
to sit, so we watched the game close-up. The folding table sat outside the wagon, and an assortment of bugs buzzed the lights strung from Stan’s pizza emporium. Some of the six players had tossed a handful of poker chips in the center of the table and we watched as the game unfolded.

No one said another word to us. There were glances, each of the players secretly sizing us up. Occasionally Crayer would look up and smile at me, but the others kept stern looks on their faces. I wondered if the rest of them were as interested in our participation as Crayer had been. The one thing they did know was that we’d made some good money in the last couple of hours, and I assumed they were ready to take it away from us. Twenty minutes later, the first game was over and after a whispered sixty-second conference with a cigar-smoking ringleader, two of the players left.

“Sorry, guys.” Crayer nodded to us. “Should have introduced you, but the first game we play every year is all seriousness. Kind of sets the tone for the rest of the weekend. Stan, this here is Skip, and this is James.” He introduced us to the cigar smoker, who checked us out through squinty eyes. “They got the number fifteen booth up there. Burgers, brats. By the looks of things they did well tonight. Right, boys?” There was no recognition of the other two unknown players.

“We didn’t know exactly what to expect.” I glanced at James.

“I’d say we did very well.”

Crayer smiled. “Well, what you made, we’d like the chance to take away. Are you boys in?” I knew it. For a couple of bucks we’d be accepted about anywhere.

We played the first few hands and broke even. The conversation centered around the reverend himself. A guy I knew very little about.

“Well, another season and more pickin’s for the rev.” Bruce
Crayer settled back in the rickety wooden folding chair. “The rubes are out in number.”

“Rubes?” James looked up from studying his cards.

“Cashdollar’s flock,” Crayer said. “He has them all believing that if they follow his lead, they’ll be rich. ’Course, he makes sure that he gets rich first.”

Stan, the pizza man, leaned back in his chair, keeping his cards close to his chest. Lighting another cigar, he studied us, not hiding his hard look. It was as if he was gauging our reaction.

“And he’s back at it, pickin’ his targets.” A big mouthed guy who’d been silent up to now leaned back in his folding chair. He waved his hand at me. “The rev. Every campaign he picks a different target. Tonight he was working on this right-wing Miami talk show host, Barry Romans.”

“He’ll get him, Mug. End of this tent meeting, Romans won’t know what hit him.”

James sipped on his beer, holding his cards tightly. “I’ve heard Romans on the radio. Like a local Rush Limbaugh.”

“Bigger than local.” Stan, the pizza man, took a puff off the fat cigar. “He’s got stations that carry him all over the state. Some even up in Georgia, I believe. So you boys are aware of him, huh?”

The big-mouthed man referred to as Mug continued. “It’s gonna be brutal. Rev’s gonna accuse him of being the Devil, get his congregation all riled up.”

“They’ll picket this Romans,” a tall skinny guy with thick glasses spoke for the first time, “and send hundreds of letters of protest to the newspaper, the radio stations.”

“And,” our neighbor Crayer gave us all a broad grin, “we make more money every meeting. Right, Dusty? Cashdollar’s loyal following love to blame somebody else for all the world’s evils. Yes, they do.”

I couldn’t help but smile too. More money was just what I needed right now.

James added to the pot, apparently sensing a big win. It didn’t happen.

For some reason I needed to know the outcome. “So does the reverend get his man? Does he bring down the target?”

“Sometimes.” Crayer shuffled the deck.

“What happens to Barry Romans?”

Mug ran his hand through his unruly, greasy mop of hair. “The rev’s nailing him for being a racist, for being a card-carrying member of the NRA, for being anticivil rights, and a whole bunch of other stuff. I think he was just makin’ shit up this afternoon, just to get more reaction. He gets a good reaction when he threatens right wingers. Even a better reaction if something happens to them.”

Mug laughed, almost like a rumble deep in his throat. “Make stuff up? The rev?”

“And?”

Crayer looked around at the five of us. “And? If the rev gets three or four thousand people riled up, they take Romans on. Tear him down.”

James was engrossed. “Is that what you mean about ‘something happening to them?’ You mean he influences that many people?”

“Kid,” Stan was puffing like a locomotive, “he’ll influence maybe ten thousand people just this weekend.”

“Wow.”

“You remember what happened to that talk show host, Don Imus? He made some comment about some black college girls, and got fired inside of a week, from TV and radio.” Stan took another puff on his cigar and a spiral of smoke climbed high and disappeared in the dark. “Reverend Al Sharpton took him on.
Crucified him. Kid, ministers and public opinion are powerful forces. They can bring down mountains.”

Everything got quiet, and I was aware of the warm, humid night air. The cloying odor of old grease, stale beer, cigar smoke, and sweat was getting to my stomach and I realized, with all the food we’d cooked, I hadn’t eaten anything.

I lost three hands, folded quickly, and was down about forty bucks. James had won his first hand, raking in over $300. And then, in typical James fashion, he promptly lost the next two hands and ended up down $200. I’d locked our newfound money in a small closet in the truck, so thank goodness he had limited funds. Knowing James, he could have blown the entire night’s take.

“More beer?” Crayer pulled a couple of long necks from the aluminum cooler by the side of Stan’s trailer. We’d already swallowed three, and I pushed myself away from the table.

“I’m going to have to decline. I’ve got work tomorrow, and then
this
again tomorrow night.”

“Skip, couple more hands here. I can win this back and we can really go home with a stash.” James gave me a pleading look.

I grabbed him by the shoulder, and he shook my hand off. “Come on, amigo. One more hand.” He twisted the cap off his beer and played another hand. Now he was down $500. It was obvious they could smell blood. Stan, Bruce, Dusty, Mug all pleaded with him to stay in the game.

James looked down at his dwindling stake, shoved the few paltry dollars back in his pocket and sadly shook his head. “Got to take Skip home, guys.”

Stan pointed up the lane. “Girls comin’ in half an hour.”

James and I both perked up a little. “Girls?”

“Thought maybe Bruce told you. Where there’s loose money, they’ll find it.”

I glanced at my partner, his big smile dwindling. “Working girls?”

The guy with the big face and shaved head named Mug, laughed out loud. “They’ll be workin’ their asses off once they get here. We set ’em up in a small tent over by the Intracoastal Waterway.” He pointed off to the right, behind a stand of trees, where the state had built a series of shelters that looked out on the man-made waterway. Working girls. Another fine use of the Florida taxpayer’s dollar. A tented whorehouse.

“Uh, I think we’ll pass.”

“Tomorrow night,” Stan the pizza guy jammed his finger into my chest, “you stay late. There’s a special little treat goin’ on and I think you young guys would enjoy it. Stay late, got it?”

We said our good-byes and Crayer said goodnight as well. The three of us worked our way up the end of the dirt road.

“I’m stayin’ in a little trailer just over there.” Crayer pointed to a spot in the distance where a scattering of dim lights shone from tents and trailers. “Most of the guys you met stay there.”

“What about the other vendors?”

“Most of the others are like you. They’re local and they go home in the evening. Got families and stuff. We’re on the road. If the rev’s got a gig, we do that, but we spread out and do shows all over the country. Fairs, carnivals, sometime even other revival meetings with other guys.”

“Well, we’re driving the truck back to our apartment. We’ll see you tomorrow night. Thanks for showing us the ropes.” I shook his hand.

“Hell, you guys were goin’ like gangbusters tonight. You got the hang of it right away.”

James nodded. “Tell me something, Bruce. When Cashdollar brings all this force to bear on somebody like Barry Romans, you’re telling me he can get him fired? That’s pretty serious power. What’s happened in the past?”

James was obsessed with it. Power, money, making something happen with his young life. He wouldn’t pass up any chance for a learning experiece. My best friend, the entrepreneur.

“I’ve been doin’ this little circus for a lot of years. Three years with the rev, but lots of years on different circuits.” Crayer ran his hand through his thinning hair. “I’ve made enough donuts to circle this world a hundred times, so I’ve got a little background.”

“And?”

“The rev started out like a lot of them, with fire and brimstone. God’s gonna getcha’ if you don’t straighten up.”

I remembered the revival meeting Buzz and I had gone to many years ago. Somewhere, I remembered, not too far from here. I had no recollection of who the preacher was. I just remember he marched around his platform with a Bible clutched in his hand and he was angry. Angry at the Devil and just about everyone else.

“And I believe that he changed people’s lives. I do. But it’s a different world out there.”

“How’s that?” James was leaning in, eagerly hoping for some business advice he could use.

“People want to blame somebody else for all the problems of the world, and the rev honed in on that. First of all, he got into the ‘God’s gonna make you rich’ thing. He got people dreaming. That’s doing really well for him. Collections doubled, tripled. But he really saw his fortunes start to climb about three years ago when he nailed that senator from Nebraska, Long I think his name was.”

I drew a blank.

“Guy was antigay, anticivil rights, and he made a couple of statements that struck the rev the wrong way. Very right wing. May have even used the N word. Rev went after him and Cashdollar was getting national press — cover of
Time
magazine — and the money was rolling in.”

“And what?” I asked. “They ran this Long out of office?”

“Not exactly. The rev got the national media behind it, got the newspapers and television networks to go after this guy. Rev was on Larry King and a lot of left-wing talk shows. He started a letter-writing campaign, phone banks, blogs on the Internet, and stuff you couldn’t imagine.”

“He’s that powerful?”

“More powerful than even that.”

“How much more powerful can you be?” Now I was intrigued.

Crayer folded his hands over his ample stomach and in the dim light gave us a hard look. “I was there when Fred Long got killed.”

All of a sudden he’d remembered the senator’s name.

“Somebody shot him in cold blood on the streets of Washington D.C. And boys,” he stopped for a moment, looking off into space, “boys, you don’t get any more powerful than that.”

James drove, and when he’d occasionally hit the brakes we could hear the kitchen equipment rattle in the back.

“What do you think he meant?” James hadn’t said much since we left the fairgrounds.

“Well, I don’t think he meant that Cashdollar actually shot the man.” I was thinking how Crayer had not been sure of the deceased’s last name, then all of a sudden had come up with the full name. No question, he knew the story.

“I don’t know the story, pally, but Jesus! That’s some serious charge.” James took a long drag on his cigarette and blew a stream of smoke out the driver’s window. “Think about it, Skip. Enough clout to have somebody whacked? What would that feel like?”

“Feel like? It would scare the hell out of me. I don’t want that kind of power. I mean, I really don’t want someone killing a senator or anybody, because of something I said.”

“And Crayer says when Cashdollar attacked, the money came pouring in.” James was all about finding new ways to make money.

I thought about Crayer’s accusation. It would be easy enough to find out if Fred Long had died. And, it should be easy to find out how he died. Maybe Cashdollar’s constant hounding did bring about his death. Or maybe the shooting was totally unrelated. Or maybe, just maybe somebody in Reverend Cashdollar’s congregation actually killed Long. “And the other thing he said —”

“What was that?”

“I was there when he was shot.”

“He must have been living in Washington at the time. They eat donuts in D.C. too.”

“And then, what about Barry Romans? I mean, is his life in danger?” James turned to me. “Imagine, Skip. What kind of business is that? One where you actually try to bring somebody down?”